35 



insignificant but deadly organism, and the Liverpool merchants have so much 

 at stake that they are always ready with the necessary funds to assist the 

 scientific workers in the Tropical School of Medicine. In fact, a movement 

 was on foot when I was there to raise funds to endow a chair of Economic 

 Entomology and Zoology, which will be the first of its kind in Great 

 Britain. Mr. Newstead has very fine laboratories, fitted with all modern. 

 appliances for dealing with entomological work, and he also gives series of 

 lectures to the students. 



I also visitd the Tropical School of Medicine of London, with its head- 

 quarters at Woolwich in conjunction with the Hospital for Seamen. Here I 

 met Colonel Alcock, late of the Indian Mu-eura at Calcutta. This is not so 

 well endowed as the Liverpool Tropical School of Medicine, but they have a 

 fine teaching staff and good laboratories. Meeting the Hon. C. N. Rothschild 

 in London, I spent a day at their private museum at Tring, going through 

 his great entomological collections with his curator, Dr. K. Jordan. Here is 

 a priceless collection of the great bird-winged butterflies (Ornithoptera), 

 many of which come from North Australia and New Guinea, and the finest 

 collection of fleas (TulicidcK) in the world, for Mr. Rothschild is the greatest 

 living authority on fleas at the present time. This is another important 

 group of insects from an economic and medical point of view, for it has been 

 proved that fleas infesting a rat affected with bubonic plague can, if it bites 

 a man, infect him with the organism that is responsible for the plague. It 

 is also stated on good authority that leprosy can be transmitted in the same 

 manner by fleas. 



Two days were spent at the Hope Zoological Museum at Oxford Uni- 

 versity, under the charge of Professor Poulton. Here are a great many 

 types of Australian insects, described by Professors Westwood, Hope, Pascoe, 

 and other entomologists. Among them is one of the first collections of 

 Scale insects, started by Westwood. Commander J. J. Walker, R.N , who 

 was stationed in Sydney some years ago, is an honorary curator in the 

 Museum, and gave me a great deal of assistance in looking up the West- 

 wood types. Among these were Wtstwood's original notes on the Medi- 

 terranean Fruit Flies, I Ted in London, in 1848, and species of Dacus (from 

 Brazil, Ceylon, and India). 



There is also a very interesting collection of Thrips (Black Fly), from 

 Ceylon, made by Dr. Thwaites, the first Director of the Botanic Gardens at 

 Peradenyia, Ceylon. Among other interesting economic notes I found 

 specimens of Icerya purchasi, " The Cottony Cushion Scale," upon the leaves 

 of acacia, with the following note : *' The cocci, forming rows with the young 

 like acari, on the outside of the waxen cover. J. D. Hooker, Horticultural 

 Society, March, 1874, South Africa." Now this famous Mealy Bug was not 

 known as a pest in California till some years after this date, though found 

 in San Mateo as far back as 1868. In South Africa it had been recorded in 

 1877, when Professor Trimen mentions he had seen it in 1873, so that these 

 specimens are probably some of the earliest collected, four years before it 

 discovered and named in New Zealand. 



Another day was spent at the Zoological Museum at Cambridge University, 

 with Dr. David Sharp, where there is another important entomological 

 collection, containing types of Australian insects. Here I found, among an 

 African collection of Diptera, several unnamed species of fruit-flies, belong- 

 ing to the genus Dacus. They also had the Cherry Fruit Fly (Rhagolete* 

 cerasi), bred from fruit in the south of England. At the Agricultural 

 Branch I met Mr. Biffin, in charge of the botanical work, interested in the 



